Little Things of Empire.

Waikato Times, Volume 121, Issue 20266, 7 August 1937, Page 15 (Supplement)

Little Things of Empire.

ALFRED C. BOSSIOM, M.P. IN SUNDAY TIMES

I AM ALWAYS a little nervous when an Imperial Conference Is sitting, always slightly afraid that the delegates may attempt something logical and heroic. It was against any such temptation that the late Lord Salisbury, in what was almost his valedictory speech, warned Britain and the Empire. We of to-day have still to guard against it because very few people can survey the British Empire without wishing to inject into it a coherence and a unity of form it does not possess. If you look at the relations that obtain between Britain and the Crown Colonies or the Federated Malay States you feel yourself In the presence of something that a Homan would have recognised as an established system of Imperial rule. But if you look at the relations between Britain and the Dominions, System Is the Last Thing you will find. Nothing ever existed more offensive to the mathematicians of politics than the British Empire. Small wonder that the Germans of another generation thought that so crazy a structure, so unsymmetrlcal and dishevelled, with so many loose ends and such Invisible supports, would topple over at a push. It was an affront to their precise minds when It failed to do so. Well, we have some people of preoise minds and impeccable logic here in Britain, and the Empire has long been their favourite hunting ground. When I was a young man the Idea of federating the Empire by applying to it “the grand old British principle of representation,” of setting up a sort of Imperial Legislature with members from all the Colonies —they were not called Dominions then — was very much in the air. It never came to anything for the very good reason that there is nothing the people- of Greater Britain more Instinctively dislike than the multiplication of formal bonds with the people and the Government of these Islands. Mr Joseph Chamberlain thirty-five years ago took a stralghter path. He believed himself—and convinced others—that the Rmpiro would gain in unity if we would eat more New Zealand mutton, drink more Australian wine, and use more Canadian wheat; and In return for the preferential admission of these commodities Into the British market he desired to earmark to an extent certain Industries and to say to the Dominions “Leave these to us” —ln other words, to make England the factory and the Dominions the food producers of the Empire. There Is the strongest oase for promoting trade within the Empire, Just as there Is the best possible case for promoting it simultaneously outside the Empire, but It Is most misleading to suppose that Imperial Preference and Ottawa Agreements. If separated from the bond of kinship, would add anything to the real forces that keep the Empire one in thought and feeling. They are the outcome of that essential unity, not one of Its creative souroes—just as In private life people who are kinsmen and who like one another may prefer to do business together on something less than strictly commercial terms, but always with the understanding that bargains and buying and selling are not the vital things in their Intercourse. By all manner of means let us have as wide an inter-Imperlal commerce as possible, but without for one moment imagining that the appeal of Empire Is to be measured by the takings In the till. This year one of the major aspeots o;f the Preferential Polioy comes up before the Conference In a highly significant form. What modifications of that policy are wo th making to procure an Anglo-American Trade Treaty? Has the policy itself proved in practice an Incentive to that Economlo Nationalism. whioh is clogging International commerce and limiting Great Britain, as a nation that lives so largely by its exports, with disconcerting severity? Tremendous issues, as wide as the world, lie behind those questions. So, too, with another preoccupation of the Conference— foreign policy and the.extent to whlsh the Empire with its myriad interests is capable of acting as a unit In its dealings with the outer world. Defence also is a firstclass problem in the way of voluntary co-operation that will meet local needs and local sentiment, and secure a general uniformity of aotion and of outlook without anything in the nature of centralised dictation. Communications by sea and air, by wireless and cable, form another group of Imperial questions that are of the utmost moment, beoause on them dopend the facilities for intercourse between its several parts that are a large part of the daily working life of the Empire. Such problems as these are the consequences of there being an Empire and of the felt need for providing It with

CULTURAL TIES THAT WILL NOT GALL.

an organisation of sorts. There is no formula ioc their solution, that is applicable to them all alike, but the reminder is never out of place that of all the oast iron systems which have been and are being tried by other • Empires, not one has produced a thousandth part of the feeling ol' kinship and of co-partnership in a common destiny that we have been able to evoke by making political and economic freedom and elasticity and the utmost play of the local point of view the watchwords of the British Empire. The reason why I am nervous when an Imperial Conference is in session is that it gives such an opening to the strait-jacket school of political thought, and to the tidy departmental type of statesmanship with its passion for order and definitions and explicit obligations and commitments. The spirit of the Empire lies apart from such things. The magnificent rally of all the realms under the British flag during the South African war and In the Great War had its Root In the Imponderables —in the instinctive unity of sentiment that binds all of the British stock, in a pride in that stock and its history and achievements, in a passionate loyalty to the Crown as the supreme symbol of our oneness, and In that feeling which makes thousands upon thousands of our kinsmen In the Dominions, who may never have crossed the seas, still think and speak of Britain as home. Those are the underlying and Indestructible foundations of the Empire. Anything therefore that feeds and reinforces these manifold streams of sentiment by (bringing the peoples of Great and of Greater Britain into closer working communion with one another Is In line with the psychology of Empire and deserves to be considered. There are little things of Empire as well as big ones, and the little things, being more human, may have In the long run a greater Influence and effect than the commercial and political issues debated at the Conference. I have often thought, for instance, that we have never developed as we should have done Cecil Rhodes's fine Idea of making Britain the educational centre of the Empire. Could there be a better thing for the Empire than a regular large-soale exchange of students and professors between the schools and universities of Britain and the Dominions? It would be an enlarging and Immensely stimulating experience on both sides, a oultural Bond that Would Link and Never Qall. Again, we have in the administrative services that attend to the government of the colonies and dependencies a vast sphere of work that will never lose Its attractiveness for youth. But as the entrance examinations are held in London, and In London only, It Is a sphere that In practice Is almost wholly reserved for those brought up and resident In Britain. The most definitely Imperial of all our fields of activity is one from which the Empire, outside these Islands, Is virtually excluded. But it would not be easy to Imagine a more fruitful and penetrating form of partnership than that of men from all over the Dominions participating In India and Africa and the Far East and the West Indies In that task of government which Is one of the British titles to fame. It would be worth faring many difficulties and taking a lot of trouble to secure such a result. We send out football teams and cricket teams all over the Empire, but I have still to hear of any scheme by which the art treasures of which Britain Is full are despatched on tours of the Dominions. There Is here a big gap In the cultural relationships between Great and Greater Britain, which, with vision and energy and good will could be most acceptably filled to the delight and gratitude of all our kinsmen overseas. Our galleries, libraries, and museums have not yet acquired the imperial point of view, and the Idea has never been seriously considered that there are great benefits to be derived from the circulation of samples of our Artistic and Historlo Treasures. In those parts of the Empire where their presenoe is oraved, without the possibility of satisfaction. Also the movement from one place to another of the indigenous creations, both old and new, as for example the aboriginal arts of British Columbia and New Zealand and present-day paintings and sculpture, would certainly deepen the Interest taken by several parts of the Commonwealth In one another. These suggestions dealing with a constant circulation and Intercourse of people and treasures would not be likely to make a great name for any statesman or win a single election, but I am confident that If acted upon they would do much to give an added vitality to what is best and most enduring in the spirit of our Empire.